I think this is the first blog post that I haven’t written in a “comfortable” place…my desk at work, my desk at home, “my” room at my grandparents’ house. I’ts 4:42am, Saturday, August 4th and I’m currently sitting in Merry Ann’s Diner, taking advantage of their free wireless. When I came in, there were two drunk guys in their early twenties, three college students, and an elderly taxi driver in the restaurant. I got to work around noon today, worked my ass off until Barb and Mandy called to invite me to dinner with the Johnstons around 5:30. After dinner at Za’s, I went to Dale’s softball game…their post-season tournament. Quest United Methodist’s co-rec team ended up winning their first two games, but losing in the championship game. I got there around 7 and left around 11pm. As I was leaving, I called Josh. We were at the fire station playing some Rainbow Six: Vegas last night and had left our computers/monitors there in anticipation of playing again tonight. Anyway, I made arrangements to go out there after stopping to pick up my laptop from the office so that one of the other firefighters could use it. I decided to run home to grab some headphones, a couple of bottles of iced tea, and the last two slices of Little Caesar’s pizza, leftover from last night. I got out there around 11:45, but Josh hadn’t run home yet. I hung out with Dan, Brandon, and Josh for a little while. Josh finally decided to run home to grab his laptop around 12:45. When he got back, Dan and Brandon left, and we started playing. The next time I looked at a clock was around 3:30. I had to take a potty break, so we quit for a bit. That turned out to be the end of it, as we both got out of the rhythm of playing. We packed up all of our stuff and headed out around 4:15. As I was driving on I-74 to get back across town, I felt hungry and eventually decided on Merry Ann’s. I called Josh, since I knew he was still awake and invited him along, but I knew that I was going to stop either way.
Enough of the back story, now we get to my quarter-life crisis…if I can write it out. I’m going to try to cover everything, so we’ll see where this goes…
Oh, before I forget, here’s a link to the Wikipedia article.
I’ve been feeling…lonely, I guess…for the past few weeks/months. I’ve got Daniel, but that’s not really what I mean. Viktor Frankl pioneered a type of therapy entitled “logotherapy.” The very basic principle is “given an adequate meaning, a person can survive anything.” This stemmed from his own experience of surviving the Nazi death camps, but can be scaled to smaller things. I have Daniel…that is enough meaning for me to survive anything. I would go through hell and back to see him one last time. I would give my life to prevent his suffering. I would do anything and could survive through anything. Thinking through that as I was typing makes tears well up in my eyes, because I feel it so deeply. I think anyone who knows me already knows that this is true, so I’m not really revealing anything new there.
I’m stuck in a job that isn’t rewarding, I’m not really sure what I want to do with my career, I’m afraid to make certain commitments. I’ve always had a great deal of faith, but I have a hard time acting upon it. I’m hesitant to get too involved with my church because I’m afraid that I might over-commit myself and burn out. I’m hesitant to go back to school or go into a completely different field (I’ve been thinking about becoming a math teacher, which I had considered for a time before feeling called into ministry). I’m hesitant to make an effort to make new friends, feeling that they’ll just move away.
I feel lonely. I want to start dating again, but the few people I’ve asked out have said no and I’ve found fault with the few people who have approached me…I still haven’t decided whether the latter is due to real faults, my own hesitations, my own expectations (being picky, perhaps), a combination of both, or something I haven’t thought of yet. I’ve talked to my therapist about it a bit and mentioned that maybe I was just being picky and his response was something along the lines of <sarcasm>”Yeah, you don’t want to be picky, it’s only the rest of your life”</sarcasm> (Note: My therapist is pretty cool.) However, I will point out that the first sentence of this paragraph indicates that I have, in fact, asked out a few people. This is a big step, as I’d only ever really done that a small number of times. The first person I asked was somewhat difficult, but it’s gotten easier each time. The payback from the rejection (read The Shy Single…) is getting less and less each time…or at least I’m learning to cut it off before it gets bad.
As I read through the quarter-life crisis description, I’m not so sure that it applies to me. *shrug* It’s now 5:17 and I’ve been typing for half an hour. I just checked wunderground and “Civil Twilight” for sunrise is in about 6 minutes, with actual sunrise being in about 36 minutes. I’m going to go home and watch it from somewhere…maybe my back porch, maybe walking around the neighborhood, maybe from the park. I’m going to try to stay up through the day, get some stuff done around the house, watch the sunset, and try to go to bed at a decent time. I haven’t been to church in weeks, so I’m going to try to be there tomorrow. I don’t know if I’m looking for perspective at the moment, or if I’m just bored, but hopefully today will be a good day.
I’ll be driving home to the moving tune of Metallica – Nothing Else Matters. Good morning, Champaign-Urbana.
